


It’ll be home again

by hit_the_books



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Betaed, Cooking, Destiel - Freeform, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester, Fluff, Hugs, Hurt Castiel, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Neck Kissing, Post-Season/Series 10 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-06
Updated: 2015-10-06
Packaged: 2018-04-25 05:26:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4948378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hit_the_books/pseuds/hit_the_books
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean and Sam return to the Bunker after unleashing the Darkness to find it in an even worse state than when Sam had left it. Sifting through the debris of their lives, Dean hears a distant cry and discovers a very weakened Castiel who appears to be have been affected by something. How the angel ended up back in the Bunker remains a mystery.</p><p>Needing to undo the damage he has done while under the influence of the Mark of Cain, Dean sets about doing what he knows he can do: cooking up mom's tomato-rice soup.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It’ll be home again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dancingmuffin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dancingmuffin/gifts).



> Thanks to my beta reader [Zeryx](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Zeryx/pseuds/Zeryx) for helping me with this fic, including pushing me to explain things just that little bit more.

Cavernous. Deep. Secret.

The thing no one says about the Bunker… That no one says when they’re down there, still and unmoving... What no one mentions when they talk about the day they opened up it up--shifting its heavy, reinforced door--yeah, that thing. Those times Dean and Sam are sat in the library by themselves... When they get right down to it: the Bunker’s more like a mausoleum to a bygone age than a place to live.

Home?

Maybe Dean and Sam can kid themselves it is. But when they’ve just returned from being tossed about like a football as a primordial evil engulfed their ‘67 Chevy Impala and the place is worst than when Sam left it--which you’d think was impossible, because it had already been gone over by several fucking dicks and Dean--you’d think less mausoleum and more the aftermath of a tornado.

Safe?

Not anymore.

“Sam?” Dean asks, pulling up inside the garage. Things are out of place. Rags spilled, tools scattered. Dean had been looking to fix the car up after it rolled while being swept up by the darkness, but instead he’d have to tidy the garage before he could touch Baby. The Impala wasn’t the only one that needed fixing, but Dean was trying to ignore his own injuries. A reply might have come from Sam, but Dean doesn’t wait.

Dean’s feet carry him to the library, a part of him half-expecting to still find Castiel bruised and bloody, laid out on a pile of their crap that the Stynes had rejected like it wasn’t worth the world. Which it was. It was the world and Dean had almost let it slip through his hands. He can feel his breath catching in his chest and he doesn’t know if it’s just his bruised ribs making it hard to breathe or if it’s the damn guilt crawling out from his heart and trying to smother him, strangle him, as he walks.

 _How do you say sorry to your best friend for almost murdering him?_ Dean’s not sure if he has the words. Does anyone have the words? Eyes roving over the destruction, the stench of gasoline snaking through the air, Dean sees several, smeared arcs of blood on the floor. Two for the Stynes and there’s several smaller drops that must have been Castiel’s. A few fleshy tiny lumps peer up at him from the floor and Dean isn’t surprised that Sam’s earlier attempts to clean had failed. _Poor kid… trying to clean up my mess_.

Bending down, Dean’s fingers ghost over splotches of rusty red. The blood dried out and tacky. Turning to his left, Dean sees the indent the angel blade left in the cover of a book. Its tan colored marble cover broken by a gaping hole. Jaw clenching, Dean stands up and tries not to yell. Tries not to swing his foot or his fist and add to the destruction, he’s done enough already.

Over the sound of his own pounding heart, he hears a muffled cry. For a moment he just thinks his mind’s decided to play cruelly with him. The cries sound so much like Cas and then-

“H-here.” It’s faint, distant, but Cas didn’t say that when Dean was beating the ever living shit out of him.

Legs aching--ribs shifting too much with each step, sending sparks of pain through his chest--Dean rushes to the source, down, down, down. Boots pounding along the poured floors. Descending into the dungeon. The hovel they’d chained that bastard Styne up and left him in…

“D-dean.” Even after what he’d done, Cas is calling for him.

Rounding a corner, Dean sees the open door into the concrete space and inside is his angel. Hands tied above his head, a black hood over his face.

“CAS!” Dean shouts, sprinting the short distance from the entrance to where the seraph is dangling.

Castiel lets out a whimper and it is one of the worst noises Dean has ever heard. The ropes above Castiel’s head were tied tight. Pulling the hood off of Cas, Dean looks into his angel’s face and he tries not to cry.

Spiderwebs of blood are dried under Castiel’s eyes and a fever has left his skin wet and cold to the touch, but the redness in his cheeks promises it’ll be back. His body is too short for the length of rope joining it to the iron loop on the ceiling, so Dean grips Cas around his waist and supports him. Trying to stop further damage happening to Cas’s wrists and pulled shoulders.

“D-dean,” Cas says weakly.

“SAM! SAM! GET YOUR ASS HERE!”

Boots pound from not far away and Sam skids to a halt to the dungeon’s opening.

“CAS!”

“Don’t just stand there, Sam, get a knife and cut him down!”

Fumbling in his pocket, Sam pulls out a silver knife and stands on tiptoes to reach over Castiel’s hands. The blade cuts through the twisted hemp in ample time, but each fiber that snaps apart is a moment too long as Dean holds Castiel up..

There’s a stilted cry from Cas as his hands are finally, fully freed from his own body weight. Dean-- _ribs be damned_ \--picks the seraph up, holding him while Sam saws through the bloodied rope on Cas’s wrists. Once that’s off, Dean carries Cas out.

Sam leads the way, no sign of the person or persons responsible for leaving Cas like this, but they’re not taking any chances. They’ll get Cas settled and then do a sweep, locking the Bunker down.

Torn pages from books are scattered along the hallway at random intervals. Broken glass cracks under Dean and Sam’s boots.

“Someone other than the Stynes has been here.”

Dean ignores Sam’s statement. He concentrates on supporting Cas-- _near-crippling pain be damned_ \--and cradles the angel’s head against his chest until he reaches his room. There’s mess on top of mess and Sam has to quickly remake Dean’s bed before Dean can put Cas down.

A weak protest rises from Cas’s lips, but Dean shushes him, needing to make sure the Bunker is safe. So he can do what he should have been doing: protecting his family. Dean lays the angel out on his bed and covers him with blankets, already feeling the fever returning. There’s still the blood under Castiel’s eyes, but that’ll have to wait.

“I’ll be back soon.”

***

Warm water trickles down Castiel’s cheeks as his he lays propped up against someone’s chest. He tries to say something, but his throat is thick, his tongue cotton in his mouth. Darkness is all he has, his eyes too crusted to open right now.

“Just trying to clean you up a little.” It was Dean.

“Drink?”

Cas feels a straw at his lips and he sucks, cool water burbling up into his mouth. It feels good. He nods and Dean takes the drink away, the washcloth returning to his face.

“Almost done here…”

“Safe?”

A sigh escapes Dean. The washcloth is dunked and then returns. “We think so… You wanna try opening your eyes for me?”

Eyelids taut and sore, slowly Castiel eases his eyes open and looks up to see Dean’s face looking down at him. Lips curling up, Cas smiles as he looks at Dean, the hunter’s green eyes without the stain the Mark of Cain had tarred them with.

“You’re you.”

A chuckle rumbles through Dean’s chest. “Yeah, I’m me.”

“I… missed you.”

“I missed you too, buddy.”

Dean says nothing as Cas turns his face to the hunter’s chest and allows himself to be reassured by the warmth and muskiness there.

***

That Castiel is not himself is obvious. Cleaning the wounds on his wrists, Dean had felt the thrum of the seraph’s grace gathering at the wound site, but it had been unable to completely heal the damage to Cas’s vessel. Instead they were having to do things the human way: antiseptic, bandages and tomato-rice soup.

Leaving Sam in charge of keeping an eye on Castiel, Dean had pulled together what they had had left in the kitchen and begun to work on some soup for Cas. The kitchen was miraculously unscarred from their second, unknown visitor, but they had not managed to find out from Cas who or what had brought him here.

Quietly, without music, Dean focuses on the task. Slowly he prepares and cuts the vegetables for the soup--finely sliced onions and celery--and opens a couple of cans of diced tomatoes. Once the onions and celery are softened in a pan, Dean adds the tomatoes, rice, some boiling water and some dried herbs before giving it all a stir and leaving it to simmer. It’s all automatic. Dean’s cooked his mom’s soup more times than he can remember, but it does its job. Soothes and feeds. Warms and heals.

It was stupid perhaps, but Dean was willing himself to just believe--for the time being--that a bowl of fresh homemade soup could make up for over a year of him putting them on hold. Pushing Cas away. The problem was Dean didn’t know for sure if Cas still wanted him that way. What if that fire had already consumed itself and turned to cold embers? Dean hadn’t heard Cas stand beside Sam, Charlie and Rowena and proclaim, “For Dean,” as the unlikely group worked to free him of the Mark of Cain. He didn’t know that Cas had held on to an ounce of hope that they could return to what they had only just been starting.

Waiting for the soup to cook, Dean sets a timer on one cell. He cleans a few bowls up and then heads back to his room. Easing his way in, Dean blanches at the mess there, but he’s thankful to see that Sam’s been trying to help tidy things up. Castiel is asleep in his bed for the moment.

“How’s he been?” Dean asks in a whisper.

Sam puts down a book on Dean’s desk. “Turned over a minute ago. I don’t know man, he almost seems human again, but he’s not. Y’know?” Sam whispers.

Dean nods. “He’s still got juice, but… it’s not doing anything.”

“I can… still hear you two.” Cas slowly sits up in bed, his skin pale and sweaty, eyes bloodshot.

“Cas! Sorry, man, we forgot about that celestial hearing of yours,” Dean tries to joke.

A smile flits over Castiel’s face and it’s sweet. The angel looks up at Dean and a part of Dean expects him to shrink back from him, for what he’s done. For the earlier wounds he caused. Instead the angel smiles again and Dean wants to sit down beside him and crush Cas in a hug, but he doesn’t. He hasn’t earned back the right to. Not yet.

It’s Sam that takes up the free space beside Cas and puts a reassuring hand on him. “Do you know who or what brought you here? What they wanted?”

A shiver runs through Castiel and before anyone can say anything else, Dean is wrapping another blanket around Cas, his hands catching the sides of Cas’s stubbled cheeks and jaw. It’s the softest blanket Dean owns.

“Thank you.”

Smiling and nodding, Dean steps away from the bed. “Need to check on the soup.” He bundles himself out of the room before Cas or Sam can say anything else.

The soup’s fine, though Dean gives it a good stir anyway before leaving it to continue simmering. Unsure what to do in the short time before it’s ready, Dean sits down at the kitchen table and pulls out one of his other cells.

The screen’s cracked and it won’t turn on.

“Great.” Dean drops the cell down on the table and rubs his face in his hands. The movement jars his ribs. “Fuck!”

“Let me check you over.” Sam’s leaning against one of the doorways.

“I’m fine, Sammy.” Dean looks up at Sam’s face and studies the facial wounds he cleaned up earlier on his brother. At least it didn’t look infected.

“C’mon.”

“You’re not going to leave me alone, are you?”

“Well, if you’re busy taking care of Cas, who’s going to look after you?”

“You.” Dean reluctantly pulls, painfully, at his shirts. He’d been so focused on anyone but himself that he’d not checked himself for injuries that he knew he had.

Crouching down beside Dean, Sam moves Dean’s shirts out of the way and winces at the bruising he can see.

“They’re either bruised or broken… you shouldn’t have carried Cas earlier.”

Dean reaches out a hand and swats Sam away. “Okay, that’s enough of that from you. I’d leave you to keep an eye on the soup… But you’d probably burn it. Go and-”

“Yeah, yeah. Keep an eye on Cas.” Rising to his feet, Sam strolls out of the kitchen.

Checking the timer on his working cell, Dean sees that he’s got just over two minutes before he needs to add some milk and heat it through for a further couple of minutes. He finds a serving tray and puts the three bowls on top of it and then three spoons. They all needed to eat something.

Thirty seconds to go and Dean measures out some milk into a cup. Tapping his fingers on the counter, in time with the timer, Dean wonders if the Bunker will ever feel like home again. Sure it was still standing, but it had been torn apart. _All the gorilla tape and sigils in the world isn’t going to keep that front door in place._

The cellphone beeps and Dean stops it. Taking the milk to the pan, Dean pours it in, stirring as he goes. Leaning over the pan, he breathes in the aroma of the soup and feels his mouth water. It’s good soup. Good healing soup.

Only a couple of more minutes and then Dean’s turning the heat off and ladling soup into the bowls. Adding some beers and a glass of water to it, he picks up the tray and carefully carries it back to his room, ignoring the twinges of pain from his sides.

“Soup’s up.” Dean rests the tray on the surface of his now tidy desk.

“Actually, I’ll have mine in my room.” Sam strolls over and hooks a beer between his fingers before stuffing a spoon in his pocket and then cradling a bowl of soup in shirt covered hands. “Thanks for cooking this.”

“Uh, no problem.” Dean’s a little surprised as Sam retreats.

Glancing over to his bed, Dean sees Cas watching him.

“Soup?”

The angel licks his lips and looks at the bowls. Cas shifts himself fully upright in Dean’s bed. “Is this your mother’s famous tomato-rice soup that you cook for Sam when he’s ill?”

“The one and same.” Dean lifts his bowl, spoon and beer off the tray and then carries Cas’s serving over.

“It smells good.”

Positioning the tray on Castiel’s lap, Dean presents Cas with a spoon. “Just remember to blow on each spoonful before you try swallowing it. Don’t need to add mouth burns to your list of injuries.”

“I know how to consume soup, Dean.”

A nervous laugh escapes Dean and he goes and sits at his desk, facing it side-on so that he can keep an eye on Cas while he eats his own bowl. Picking up his spoon, Dean follows his own instructions and he smiles a little at the familiar flavors that swim over his tongue. The tang of the tomato and the smoothness from the milk.

Castiel slurps his soup. “Sam said you are injured.”

Dean takes a swig from his beer. “Meh..”

“You should not have carried me.”

Rolling his eyes, Dean ignores Castiel’s rebuke and continues to chow down on his soup. They eat their meals in silence, except for the sound of the odd slurp. When they’re done, Dean gets up and takes the tray from Castiel. He’s planning to help Sam with fixing the Bunker up some more.

Piling the bowls onto the tray, Dean goes to leave. He notices a faint sheen to Cas’s skin and wonders if soup had been the best choice.

“I’m gonna help Sam sort out some more of the Bun-”

“Please, stay with me.”

The idea that Castiel wants his company, after everything… _He… wants me?_

“Don’t be so surprised. Stay with me, Dean.”

Placing the tray back down on his desk, Dean sits back down on the chair beside it.

“With _me_ , Dean.” Cas pats a free spot on the bed.

Nervous, Dean comes and sits on the edge of the bed. He removes his boots and then scoots in beside Cas. A part of him feels like he no longer has the right, because of what happened back in the library, _but I am me now_. Cas moves down the bed a little and ends up shifting into Dean’s arms, careful of his ribs.

“Better.” Castiel huffs a breath out and rests his head on Dean’s right shoulder.

The hunter looks down at his angel and is pleased to see that the feverishness he worried was returning is showing no further signs of coming back for the moment. For a few minutes, neither says anything. There’s just the sound of them breathing.

Castiel’s bruised and bloodied face swims before Dean, the memory tugging its way out as he breathes in the scent of Cas. Dean sighs. “I’m sorry.”

“It was the Mark. There’s no need for you to say sorry.”

“Cas-”

The angel glares up at Dean and Dean shuts his mouth. Laying there on his bed like they are, Dean can’t help smelling Cas’s hair. Despite everything, he still has that familiar scent of heather, a storm about to break and ozone.

“I’m… I’m sure I’ll have you fixed up in no time.” Dean’s looking at the bandages on Castiel’s wrists.

“I already feel better than when you found me.”

“Good.” Dean’s face is drawn towards the back of Castiel’s neck.

“I’m sorry about your home.”

“It’s okay, between Sam and me, we’ll have it fixed up in no time.” Dean’s lips gently press against the back of Castiel’s neck. Cas tastes salty from his fever sweat.

Cas makes a pleased hum lightly in the back of his throat. “Maybe you should use this as an opportunity to get some new furniture? Really make the place yours.”

Dean kisses Cas’s neck again and Castiel’s breathing hitches. “You’re talking about nesting, now?”

“I am just saying it would be nice to finally remove the mausoleum look. This is a place for the living, not the dead.” Castiel reaches out his right hand and twines his fingers with Dean’s left.

The salt of Cas’s neck feels good on Dean’s tongue as he licks and kisses the angel. “You’re awfully talkative for a sick celestial being.”

“Your soup was awfully good for a descendant of a fish.”

A chuckle painfully ripples through Dean and he finds it hard to breathe. Kisses on the back of Castiel’s neck are his retort for the fish and an apology for pulling the two of them apart. Maybe this time the Bunker really could be home.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a request fic from muffin. The original request was very detailed, but basically involved: post-attack dog spell Cas who's ill, motherhen!Dean, soup, a Bunker in pieces and some kisses and cuddles.
> 
> Share the fic straight from my Tumblr over at [Dreams from the Bunker](http://dreamsfromthebunker.tumblr.com/post/130648392420/itll-be-home-again%22).


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